Brandon certainly doesn't need me to explain his positions, but I believe I understand what motivated him to start this thread, and if not, I can at least explain why I might have.
The fact that there are far worse violators of human rights in the world than the US government, in no way makes the US government's violation of human rights acceptible, but while none of the current posters in this thread may may fit this description, there are quite a few, at least arguably, educated people in this forum and in the world who contend that the US is among, if not at the forefront of, the worse human rights violators on our planet.
Repeatedly confronted with this nonsensical charge can be frustrating, if not dismaying. Posting an article that speaks to the extent of violations in one of the true world leaders in this category, is a way in which Brandon or I might attempt to bring some perspective to the matter.
If one finds the thread absurd, pointless, disingenuous, or a thinly veiled attempt at attacking them and their associates, they need not engage or they can do so and attack Brandon.
Personally, I don't buy the argument that our only real chance of defending human rights and preventing governmental violations is within the nation in which we live. Chinese activists have a better chance impacting the behavior and practices of the US government than they do those of their own. In reality, as old europe suggests, our best chance of defending human rights and preventing governmental violations are within the most democratic of nations; the least in need crusaders.
If this occurred in the US, the UN and every other left leaning nation would be bitching, and the NY TIMES would have it front page above the fold.
Where is the outcry from the UN, etc...?
I think that is Brandons point.
Brandon9000 wrote:Finn dAbuzz wrote:...The fact that there are far worse violators of human rights in the world than the US government, in no way makes the US government's violation of human rights acceptible, but while none of the current posters in this thread may may fit this description, there are quite a few, at least arguably, educated people in this forum and in the world who contend that the US is among, if not at the forefront of, the worse human rights violators on our planet....
Yes, that's it.
With the wind down and the noise of flags all aflap decreased...
You boys make an argument steeped in moral relativism. Relative to China or Cuba or Mussolini, the US is more moral. Pat yourselves on the back. Great achievement.
Better that you should compare the US to its own stated/presumed moral standards and work from there. Unless, of course, your goal is to either distract attention (your own or others) from all that the US has done which it ought not to have done. Or if your goal is to suggest that the US is absolved because others were worse.
Quote:Quote:a civilian candy truck tried to merge with a column of our armored vehicles, only to get run over and squashed. The occupants were smashed beyond recognition. Our first sight of death was a man and his wife both ripped open and dismembered, their intestines strewn across shattered boxes of candy bars. The entire platoon hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours. We stopped, and as we stood guard around the wreckage, we grew increasingly hungry. Finally, I stole a few nibbles from one of the cleaner candy bars. Others wiped away the gore and fuel from the wrappers and joined me...
Entering the city with the Marines, Wright gets to see just how devastating the impact has been. Smoke curls from collapsed structures, and houses facing the road are pockmarked and cratered. The corpses of Iraqi attackers are scattered on the road leading out of the city. Run over repeatedly by tracked vehicles, "they are flattened, with their entrails squished out," Wright notes, adding:
Quote:We pass a bus, smashed and burned, with charred human remains sitting upright in some windows. There's a man in the road with no head and a dead little girl, too, about three or four, lying on her back. She's wearing a dress and has no legs.
Heading north, the Marines find themselves amid the palm trees and canals of the Fertile Crescent, but all around are signs of death. Along the highway are torched vehicles with "charred corpses nearby, occupants who crawled out and made it a few meters before expiring, with their grasping hands still smoldering." Lying beside one car is the mangled body of a small child, face down, whose clothes are too ripped to determine the gender. "Seeing this is almost no longer a big deal," Wright comments. "Since the shooting started in Nasiriyah forty-eight hours ago, firing weapons and seeing dead people has become almost routine." Fick, reaching back to his four years in a Jesuit high school, writes that he found himself "mouthing the Twenty-third Psalm: 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death....'"
The morale of Fick's men continues to erode as they press northward. A new source of tension is added by the need to set up roadblocks to counter the unanticipated threat of suicide attacks. Because these sites tend to be poorly marked, many Iraqi drivers fail to stop at them. When US soldiers fire warning shots, the Iraqis often speed up. As a result, many are killed. After one car has been shot at, a Marine named Graves goes to help a little girl cowering in the back seat, her eyes wide open. As he goes to pick her up, "thinking about what medical supplies he might need to treat her...the top of her head slides off and her brains fall out," Wright writes. As Graves steps back in horror, his boot slips in the girl's brains. "This is the event that is going to get to me when I go home," he says.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20906
I'm speaking about the hypocrites in the media and the UN who continually disparage the actions of the US and ignore gross violations of other Nations.
Why is that?
We've made our position crystal clear, and you simply refuse to acknowledge it. If your only mode of argument is to distort our position, then your arguments are invalid. The point is that we don't condone abridgement of rights by anyone - at all - and those doing it should stop or be stopped right now, but we're responding to the people who paint the US as the worst offender - which isn't even close to the truth. The US is just the whipping boy.
Quote:I'm speaking about the hypocrites in the media
There is nothing hypocritical regarding US media addressing the moral failings of the US. Were they not to do so would be a moral failing itself.
Quote:and the UN who continually disparage the actions of the US and ignore gross violations of other Nations.
This claim is factually false and the magnitude of how false it is likely evades you because of what you read and what you don't read. Press from other countries, and the UN, and countless NGOs do not reserve criticism just for the US.
It isn't.
Brandon9000 wrote:We've made our position crystal clear, and you simply refuse to acknowledge it. If your only mode of argument is to distort our position, then your arguments are invalid. The point is that we don't condone abridgement of rights by anyone - at all - and those doing it should stop or be stopped right now, but we're responding to the people who paint the US as the worst offender - which isn't even close to the truth. The US is just the whipping boy.
If we are agreed that your primary moral responsibility is for US actions (you being a citizen of a democratic US), then please detail what you've done to either bring to light US moral failings in the world or what you've done to minimize them.
If there's not a lot you can offer up, then your whining serves only as distraction or immoral demand for absolution.
blatham wrote:Quote:I'm speaking about the hypocrites in the media
There is nothing hypocritical regarding US media addressing the moral failings of the US. Were they not to do so would be a moral failing itself.
Quote:and the UN who continually disparage the actions of the US and ignore gross violations of other Nations.
This claim is factually false and the magnitude of how false it is likely evades you because of what you read and what you don't read. Press from other countries, and the UN, and countless NGOs do not reserve criticism just for the US.
It isn't.
Really? Now who is being naive!
woiyo wrote:blatham wrote:Quote:I'm speaking about the hypocrites in the media
There is nothing hypocritical regarding US media addressing the moral failings of the US. Were they not to do so would be a moral failing itself.
Quote:and the UN who continually disparage the actions of the US and ignore gross violations of other Nations.
This claim is factually false and the magnitude of how false it is likely evades you because of what you read and what you don't read. Press from other countries, and the UN, and countless NGOs do not reserve criticism just for the US.
It isn't.
Really? Now who is being naive!
Well, now tell me...what international press have you read yesterday and today? What american press have you read yesterday and today?
When is the last time you went to this site or a similar?
http://www.un.org/issues/m-hr.html
When is the last time you read or referred to an Amnesty International report? Or followed up on what the larger international NGOs are doing and reporting?
blatham wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:We've made our position crystal clear, and you simply refuse to acknowledge it. If your only mode of argument is to distort our position, then your arguments are invalid. The point is that we don't condone abridgement of rights by anyone - at all - and those doing it should stop or be stopped right now, but we're responding to the people who paint the US as the worst offender - which isn't even close to the truth. The US is just the whipping boy.
If we are agreed that your primary moral responsibility is for US actions (you being a citizen of a democratic US), then please detail what you've done to either bring to light US moral failings in the world or what you've done to minimize them.
If there's not a lot you can offer up, then your whining serves only as distraction or immoral demand for absolution.
My personal qualities have no bearing on the truth or falsehood of an opinion I state. Please debate my assertions based on their merit and not based on their origin.
You seem to be a large source of faulty reasoning today. First you misstate my position so that you can appear to defeat it, and then you say that my argument is proven false by a reference to my personal actions. How about just arguing with my opinions as stated?
Brandon9000 wrote:blatham wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:We've made our position crystal clear, and you simply refuse to acknowledge it. If your only mode of argument is to distort our position, then your arguments are invalid. The point is that we don't condone abridgement of rights by anyone - at all - and those doing it should stop or be stopped right now, but we're responding to the people who paint the US as the worst offender - which isn't even close to the truth. The US is just the whipping boy.
If we are agreed that your primary moral responsibility is for US actions (you being a citizen of a democratic US), then please detail what you've done to either bring to light US moral failings in the world or what you've done to minimize them.
If there's not a lot you can offer up, then your whining serves only as distraction or immoral demand for absolution.
My personal qualities have no bearing on the truth or falsehood of an opinion I state. Please debate my assertions based on their merit and not based on their origin.
You seem to be a large source of faulty reasoning today. First you misstate my position so that you can appear to defeat it, and then you say that my argument is proven false by a reference to my personal actions. How about just arguing with my opinions as stated?
Other than use of "whining", there's no address to your personal qualities. The address was to your reasoning.
"truth or falsehood of an opinion I state", you say. What opinion or assertion which is available to truth-testing would you like me to focus on?
blatham wrote:woiyo wrote:blatham wrote:Quote:I'm speaking about the hypocrites in the media
There is nothing hypocritical regarding US media addressing the moral failings of the US. Were they not to do so would be a moral failing itself.
Quote:and the UN who continually disparage the actions of the US and ignore gross violations of other Nations.
This claim is factually false and the magnitude of how false it is likely evades you because of what you read and what you don't read. Press from other countries, and the UN, and countless NGOs do not reserve criticism just for the US.
It isn't.
Really? Now who is being naive!
Well, now tell me...what international press have you read yesterday and today? What american press have you read yesterday and today?
When is the last time you went to this site or a similar?
http://www.un.org/issues/m-hr.html
When is the last time you read or referred to an Amnesty International report? Or followed up on what the larger international NGOs are doing and reporting?
Probably the same, or more than you. You are no indication of a internationally astute individual. You seem to be just another liberal tout who likes to make the US look bad to disguise the weakness of themselves.
Based upon the members of the UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE, I find your statements absurd, but not surprising.
Plain truth is that when you put yourself forward as the moral compass of the world and meddle in everyones affairs..... then you're going to get the blame
for all the bad things thathappen whether you deserve it or not. Every time.
Someone forgot to teach little georgie how to mind his own goddam business and keep his nose out of everyone else's while he was growing up.
woiyo
Don't even bother. We've caught you lying before and it's not pretty.
I have yet to see a list of any human or constitutional rights that have either been violated by or denied to any US citizen because of the Bush admin.
Finn dAbuzz wrote:Brandon certainly doesn't need me to explain his positions...
You're wrong:
Brandon needs all the help he can get.
Finn dAbuzz wrote:The fact that there are far worse violators of human rights in the world than the US government, in no way makes the US government's violation of human rights acceptible, but while none of the current posters in this thread may may fit this description, there are quite a few, at least arguably, educated people in this forum and in the world who contend that the US is among, if not at the forefront of, the worse human rights violators on our planet.
Who are all of these people? If there are so many of them, I imagine you could name at least three without any problem whatsoever.
blatham wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:blatham wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:We've made our position crystal clear, and you simply refuse to acknowledge it. If your only mode of argument is to distort our position, then your arguments are invalid. The point is that we don't condone abridgement of rights by anyone - at all - and those doing it should stop or be stopped right now, but we're responding to the people who paint the US as the worst offender - which isn't even close to the truth. The US is just the whipping boy.
If we are agreed that your primary moral responsibility is for US actions (you being a citizen of a democratic US), then please detail what you've done to either bring to light US moral failings in the world or what you've done to minimize them.
If there's not a lot you can offer up, then your whining serves only as distraction or immoral demand for absolution.
My personal qualities have no bearing on the truth or falsehood of an opinion I state. Please debate my assertions based on their merit and not based on their origin.
You seem to be a large source of faulty reasoning today. First you misstate my position so that you can appear to defeat it, and then you say that my argument is proven false by a reference to my personal actions. How about just arguing with my opinions as stated?
Other than use of "whining", there's no address to your personal qualities. The address was to your reasoning.
"truth or falsehood of an opinion I state", you say. What opinion or assertion which is available to truth-testing would you like me to focus on?
When you addressed my original statement of position, you mischaracterized it. We absolutely don't condone any abridgement of human rights anywhere, including by the US. Our only point is that the characterization of the US as one of the worst violaters of human rights is far from true.
Bi-Polar Bear wrote:Plain truth is that when you put yourself forward as the moral compass of the world and meddle in everyones affairs..... then you're going to get the blame
for all the bad things thathappen whether you deserve it or not. Every time.
Someone forgot to teach little georgie how to mind his own goddam business and keep his nose out of everyone else's while he was growing up.
So does that mean we should no longer provide humanitarian aid?
Should we have let the tsunami victims suffer needlessly?
Should we let flood victims suffer for no reason?
Should we stop providing the majority of food and medical aid to UN rescue missions around the world?
After all,all of those are "meddling" in other countries affairs.
I wondered who'd be first to use that "argument".
Humnanitarian aid is suppled by many many nations and private agencies and does not give us the right to meddle in the affairs of sovereign countries.
